Record Making With Duke Ellington (1937)

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This promotional short for Irving Mills' short-lived Master and Variety labels not only gives us a glimpse of Ellington and his band in the actual Master/Variety studios (as opposed to a soundstage set), but is one of the very few film accounts of how records were recorded, plated and pressed in the long-ago age of analog, shellac and 78 rpm. Narration is provided by pioneer radio announcer Alois Havrilla.

Channel: Howto & Style
Uploaded: May 5, 2006 at 8:19 am
Author: WhenSwingWasKing

Length: 00:05:05
Rating: 4.86
Views: 85737

Tags: Duke Ellington recording swing jazz

Video Comments:
formiga1950 (October 19, 2008 at 10:07 pm)
Beautifull movie. I would like to know HOW they filmed and made the sync at the studio session.
georgiapeachda1 (October 17, 2008 at 5:11 am)
so, im going to this place called beautiful time. wanna watch?
druboogie (October 14, 2008 at 10:20 pm)
Dont be so sure...Cutters got much more accurate in the 50's, but the problem was bad engineers that didnt have elaborate consoles to mix properly. By the 60's all the studios finally got consoles with eq's, and everyones sound came out better.
ToddCMorgan (October 27, 2008 at 3:43 pm)
Then why do many '50's recordings sound cleaner than '60's recordings?
druboogie (October 14, 2008 at 10:16 pm)
This is as far back as stamping goes back was on the 78 shellac. Before that, bands played into the big horn, and before that was the cylinder record which started the whole thing.
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pizzaflixtv (August 12, 2008 at 1:15 pm)
this is a great video!
Kirke182 (August 9, 2008 at 9:40 am)
There were no tape recorders then so the music when straight from the studio session to the master. Notice they had two masters going simultaneously. Probably in case one got hosed up. And, yeah, dig that crazy mixing console, baby! Amazing they could do all that considering how primitive it was. Thank you very much for posting this. It answered some questions I had about how shellac 78s were made.
EwaldK (August 3, 2008 at 5:18 am)
Makes you wonder how they ever cranked a product out of the factory in those days! Perfect video, nice to see what a studio looked like in those days. Those mixing desks were really compact back then ;)
annahot18 (August 1, 2008 at 3:12 am)
Download vinyls in MP3 format for free! VinylFile(*)Net